The Ippen family

Logo of The Ippen family

The Ippen family includes publisher Dr Dirk Ippen, his wife Magdalena Ippen, his three sons, including son Jan Andreas Ippen, and nephew Daniel Schöningh. Together, the family holds shares in numerous media and publishing houses. Dirk Ippen is, among other things, the majority shareholder of the newspaper publishing house F. Wolff & Sohn, the newspaper holding company Hessen, the Westfälischer Anzeiger Verlagsgesellschaft, the Münchner Merkur and the tz. Ippen's publishing group is the fifth largest newspaper group in Germany and primarily comprises regional daily newspapers and advertising journals. It is worth mentioning that many of the holdings are held directly by Dirk Ippen.

Media Companies / Groups

Media Outlets

Facts

affiliated_business_interestsPublishing
  • F. Wolff & Sohn KG (90%)
  • Fehmarnsches Tageblatt Burg-Verlag Verwaltungs-GmbH (100%)
  • Fehmarnsches Tageblatt Burg-Verlag GmbH & Co KG (100%)
  • G. T. Werbung GmbH (100%)
  • Meinerzhagener Druck- und Verlagshaus Walther Kämper GmbH & Co KG (100%)
  • Carl Hinnerwisch Verlag GmbH & Co KG (80% directly, 6,72% indirectly via F. Wolff & Sohn KG)
  • Hinnerwisch & Schmidt GmbH (45.6% directly, indirectly via F. Wolff & Sohn KG)
  • Schongauer Nachrichten Karl Motz GmbH & Co. KG (10% directly, indirectly via F. Wolff & Sohn KG)
  • Beckers Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (10% directly, 60% indirectly via F. Wolff & Sohn KG)
  • C. Beckers Buchdruckerei GmbH & Co KG (10% directly, 60% indirectly via F. Wolff & Sohn KG)
  • MBG Medien Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (directly 3%, indirectly via F. Wolff & Sohn KG and MBG Medien Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH)
Affiliated Interests Family & Friends
  • Dr Dirk Ippen
    is the son of Rolf Ippen, a former minority shareholder of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), which is now wholly owned by the Funke Mediengruppe. Dirk Ippen grew up in Essen, studied law in Freiburg, Hamburg and Münster, where he also obtained his doctorate. Shortly before his death in the late 1960s, his father had secured him a share in the Westfälischer Anzeiger in Hamm. At the age of just 28, Dirk Ippen managed to restructure the publishing house and anchor the newspaper more firmly in the region as both junior publisher and editor-in-chief. Over the decades, Ippen had used the publishing house of the Westfälischer Anzeiger to create a nationwide network of regional and local newspapers by skilfully acquiring district newspapers, which cover a single district – usually in cooperation and not as the sole publisher. In 2000, he founded the non-profit Ippen Foundation for cultural and social concerns in the places where his newspapers are published. He is also a member of the board of trustees of the Roland Berger Foundation.
  • Jan Andreas Ippen
    is managing director of Ippen Digital Media GmbH. He holds 8% of the shares in the publishing house F. Wolff & Sohn KG and is considered the digital strategist of the Ippen Group. Ippen trained as a banker and studied industrial engineering in Munich. In 2005, Ippen joined the Markt Group as head of IT, which at that time was still jointly owned by the Funke Media Group, the Rheinische Post and the Ippen Group. In 2006, he founded Ippen Digital as a service provider and developer of internet platforms within the newspaper group, as well as the operator of the Ippen central editorial office. In 2011, the content agency Ippen Digital Media was added, which also serves external customers.
  • Daniel Schöningh
    is the nephew of Dirk Ippen. He holds 30% of the shares in the publishing house F. Wolff & Sohn KG. He is the managing director of F. Wolff & Sohn KG, Münchener Zeitungs-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG and other companies in which the Ippen family has a shareholding interest.
  • Magdalena Ippen
    is the wife of Dirk Ippen. She holds 1% of the shares in the publishing house F. Wolff & Sohn KG.
Data Publicly Available
ownership data is easily available from other sources, e. g. public registries etc.
Headlines
Meta DataMore than 20 daily newspapers, several radio stations and numerous advertising papers belong to the Ippen Group, which as such can be seen as more of an umbrella brand with which Ippen presents itself to the outside world. A large part of the investments are held, controlled, co-designed or influenced in one way or another directly or indirectly through F. Wolff & Sohn KG. The Ippen family is the majority shareholder of the KG, but also of other media publishing houses, some of which are sole shareholders, that belong to the Ippen Group.
Sources